Apple has given its non-Pro tablet lineup a major boost by bringing the M4 chip to the iPad Air, but early benchmark results suggest buyers shouldn’t expect identical performance to the pricier iPad Pro. Even though both tablets share the “M4” name, the iPad Air appears to use a binned version of the chip, and that decision can translate into a noticeable performance gap in demanding, multi-core workloads.
Ahead of the new models becoming widely available, Geekbench 6 has posted early single-core and multi-core scores that highlight how Apple is separating the iPad Air from the iPad Pro. The key difference starts with CPU core counts: the M4 iPad Air uses an 8-core CPU made up of three performance cores and five efficiency cores. The iPad Pro, meanwhile, ships with either a 9-core or 10-core CPU configuration.
In single-core performance, the differences are relatively small, which is good news for everyday tasks that rely on one fast core at a time, such as app launching, light productivity, and general interface responsiveness. Things change more dramatically in multi-core performance, which affects heavier workloads like video editing, large photo exports, 3D rendering, code compilation, and complex multitasking.
Here are the benchmark scores reported in Geekbench 6:
M4 iPad Air (8-core CPU)
Single-core: 3,714
Multi-core: 12,296
M4 iPad Pro (9-core CPU)
Single-core: 3,765 (about 1.4% faster than iPad Air)
Multi-core: 13,408 (about 9% faster than iPad Air)
M4 iPad Pro (10-core CPU)
Single-core: 3,846 (about 3.6% faster than iPad Air)
Multi-core: 15,100 (about 22.8% faster than iPad Air)
The headline number is the multi-core gap between the iPad Air and the top-end 10-core M4 iPad Pro, where the iPad Air trails by more than 20%. That aligns with what you’d expect when one device has fewer CPU cores available and is likely using a lower-binned chip. The comparison also shows why the 9-core iPad Pro looks closer to the iPad Air: with fewer cores than the 10-core model, its multi-core lead shrinks to a more modest difference.
Even so, the bigger picture is that the M4 remains an extremely powerful tablet processor, and Apple putting it into the iPad Air at a starting price of $599 makes the Air a compelling performance-focused upgrade for many buyers. The trade-off is simply that “M4” doesn’t automatically mean “same M4,” and those shopping specifically for the highest sustained multi-core performance will still find the iPad Pro clearly ahead.
This binned-chip approach also isn’t new for Apple. The company has done similar segmentation before, including with its latest lower-cost phone, the iPhone 17e, which uses a less capable A19 variant. For customers, the takeaway is straightforward: the M4 iPad Air delivers high-end speed for less money, but the iPad Pro retains a real performance advantage, especially in heavily threaded professional workloads.
